


Crawl til Dawn

by thepartyresponsible



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, References to Drugs, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22151566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepartyresponsible/pseuds/thepartyresponsible
Summary: Jason sees it hooking into Roy a full day before Roy seems to notice himself. Jason stays close, but he keeps his mouth shut. Roy’s stronger than anyone ever gives him credit for, and, sometimes, most of the time, he manages to pick himself back up before he tunnels too deep.This isn’t one of those times.
Relationships: Roy Harper/Jason Todd
Comments: 32
Kudos: 376





	Crawl til Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on tumblr as part of my spooky season series. It was written for [cas-tellation](https://cas-tellation.tumblr.com/), who asked for vampire Jason Todd and Roy Harper. 
> 
> The title is from "Damn These Vampires" by The Mountain Goats.

Jason sees it hooking into Roy a full day before Roy seems to notice himself. Jason stays close, but he keeps his mouth shut. Roy’s stronger than anyone ever gives him credit for, and, sometimes, _most_ of the time, he manages to pick himself back up before he tunnels too deep.

This isn’t one of those times.

“Jay,” Roy says, when Jason rolls out of bed sometime close to sundown. He looks terrible, all caught up in guilt and shame, and Jason can practically taste the panic on the back of his tongue. “Hey, Jay, sorry.”

He’s standing next to the window, squinting out at the streetlights, and he isn’t shaking, but he’s about as close as he gets when he’s sober.

Jason gives him a long, considering look and then grabs for the closest pair of pants on the floor. “You do something you need to apologize for?” he asks, as he steps into the jeans.

Roy screws his mouth up into an unhappy line. He shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Not yet. I’m gonna.”

“Doesn’t count,” Jason says. “If you haven’t done it, you don’t have to apologize for it.”

Roy tips his head forward, forehead pressed against the glass, and stares hard at the reflection of his own face. “I would’ve,” he says. “If anyone in this town would still sell to me, I would’ve.”

Roy’s been clean for a year and a half. But the last time he relapsed, it took Jason two weeks to find him, and he’d ripped the throat out of every dealer he found on the way. Even in this shitty, blood-thirsty town, that sort of message gets taken to heart. These days, Roy can clear a room of dealers just by walking in.

“Doesn’t count,” Jason says, as he comes up behind Roy, hooks his chin over Roy’s shoulder. “If you didn’t do it, you don’t have anything to apologize for.”

Roy breathes out. He holds his hands up for Jason to see, and Jason casts an appraising look over the fine tremors that must be throwing Roy right into terror. “I can’t shoot like this, Jaybird,” he says. “I tried. I _missed_.”

“Hm,” Jason says. Roy thinks hitting anything other than the exact bullseye constitutes some kind of mortal sin. And Jason wouldn’t understand that, except he still hears Bruce’s voice in his head every time he misses a dodge or throws a shitty punch. He knows exactly what it feels like to fail, knows how the path runs straight from failure to abandonment.

He wasn’t good enough to fight demons, so now he _is_ one, forever.

And Roy wasn’t good enough to keep, so now he’s trash, forever.

It doesn’t do any good, telling Roy to stay home for a few days to get his head right. The second Jason offers to run patrol alone, Roy hears a countdown that doesn’t exist, starts to think he’s going to wake up one day to find all his stuff in boxes.

“You want me to help?” Jason asks, because it would be cruel, making Roy ask. Roy’s been brave enough. He noses at Roy’s neck, scrapes his teeth against the thin skin of his throat, just so they’re both clear on what Jason’s offering.

Roy breathes out hard, and Jason can feel the tension in him unlock. It’s fascinating and gratifying, the way Roy slumps back against him.

“I know I gotta quit asking you,” Roy says. “It’s fucked up, Jay. I know that.”

“Not that fucked up,” Jason says. “And I’m not complaining.”

Roy hesitates. He looks in the window, stares at Jason’s face in the glass. “I know you don’t like to.”

“I like to,” Jason says. He nips at Roy’s neck to prove his point, and Roy makes the kind of low, punched-out noise that always confuses things. Like Jason has any choice _but_ to like it, with Roy making noises like that.

“Well, but you don’t,” Roy says, shifting around so they’re finally face to face. “You never bite when we’re fooling around.”

Jason rolls his eyes and digs his thumb into a fading bruise he left in the hollow of Roy’s hip. “I bite plenty,” he says, smirking at the way Roy squirms at the pressure, like he can’t decide if he wants to be closer or farther away.

Roy’s like that about a lot of things. Generally, no matter how bad it is for him, he decides _closer_ is better than alone. Jason thinks maybe they have that in common.

“Jay.” Roy’s fingers tangle up with Jason’s, and Jason blinks down at their hands, startled by the gesture, caught off-guard by how sweet it is. “You gotta tell me if I’m fucking things up, if this is fucking things up. I want to know.”

Jason’s been drinking his way through Gotham’s underbelly ever since Talia deemed him fit to be among civilized company. He feeds on murderers and rapists and traffickers and dealers who sell to kids. He drinks down all that toxic, poisoned blood, and he purifies it. Violence, filtered through him, buys some kind of peace.

Bruce, for his part, keeps extra holy water on his utility belt these days. For Christmas last year, Jason sent three stakes to the manor with little Robin symbols carved into them. He doesn’t know what Bruce did with them. He didn’t get any presents of his own, and the deliberate absence of a thank you note from Alfred suggests his presents were not fully appreciated.

It’s a joke, what happened to Jason. He’s a walking, talking, blood-swilling _joke_. He drains the cesspit of Gotham by drinking his way through it, and it’s not the life he would’ve asked for, not the mission he wanted when he was fifteen, but he’s good at what he does. And he’s not ashamed of it. He sure as hell doesn’t have any apologies to give for the work he does or the lives he saves.

“If I’m fucking things up,” Roy says, soft and earnest, fragile here with Jason in a way he never is outside this apartment anymore, “I don’t want it. I don’t want to lose you.”

Jason’s lost everyone he ever cared about. He wouldn’t leave Roy Harper if he pulled Jason’s heart out of his chest and ate it in front of him.

“You’re not fucking things up,” he says. He kisses him, quick and careful, his best approximation of sweet. “I told you, I like it. You wanna do it now, or do you need to eat something first?”

Roy pauses, eyes moving all over Jason’s face like he thinks Jason’s hiding secrets in his eyebrows. “If,” he says, and then takes a slow, controlled breath. It’s the breath he takes when he draws the string back. “If you’re good,” he says, “now’s fine. I ate dinner a while ago.”

“Okay,” Jason says. Whether he ate or didn’t, Roy’s probably going to be asleep in about thirty minutes, but he’ll feel better in the morning, if he remembered to eat. “Bed?”

“Yeah,” Roy says. He untangles his hand from Jason’s and pulls his hoodie and t-shirt off, makes his way back across their bedroom stripped down to his waist.

Jason watches him go, tracks the familiar constellations of freckles scattered across Roy’s shoulders. He takes a second to get himself steady, and then he follows, pushes Roy into the bed when he pauses at the foot of it, acts like he wants to check and double-check that this isn’t going to fuck things up between them.

Roy collapses into bed once he’s there, sprawled out against the sheets that Jason didn’t bother to neaten, throws a crooked smile Jason’s direction, which is a promise he’s not going to keep. “Neck, right?” he says, and arches it, shows off the long line of his throat and all those beautiful blue veins running below the surface.

“Or anywhere,” Jason says, as he settles on top of him, straddles him with his knees on either side of Roy’s hips, and does his best not to get distracted. “Don’t have to leave marks on your throat, Roy. It can be anywhere.”

Roy smiles again, and it’s darker this time, twisted up and mean, full of that self-loathing he never fully shakes. “Had worse marks on me than yours, Jaybird.”

Jason breathes out and doesn’t think about it. “Neck, then,” he says. “You sure?”

“Always sure,” Roy says. “It’s you.”

Jason runs his thumb across Roy’s mouth, trying to block those words, keep them pinned up where they’re safe. That’s his shit, though, not Roy’s. He gets flighty every time Roy shows too much affection. It’s not Roy’s fault. It’s just that everyone who ever told Jason they loved him eventually left him, and so if Roy never says it, maybe he won’t leave, too.

Roy’s hands tighten around Jason’s bare waist. He isn’t shaking anymore. They’re all in his head, the things that eat him alive. If they were out here in the world of bone and meat, Jason could kill them. But they aren’t.

“Gonna hurt,” Jason says, because it will.

“Yeah, I know,” Roy says, and tips his head back, gives him room.

Jason bites fast and hard, and Roy doesn’t even flinch, just breathes his way through it.

Jason’s been swallowing blood for years now, siphoning darkness out of the world. It’s so much harder, drinking this, drinking light. He was supposed to be a hero, not a parasite.

Roy makes a soft noise underneath him, arches up, presses bare skin against bare skin, and it’s so good that Jason almost bites deeper. He wants to drink and drink until there’s nothing left. He wants all that strength inside him, wants to burn with it, wants to feel Roy all the way down to the marrow in his bones.

It’s so _good_. It’s always so good.

He doesn’t know how Roy can hate himself so Goddamn much, when he’s bleeding sunlight straight into Jason’s mouth.

Jason pulls back when Roy’s heartrate starts to slow, when all that anxious energy has been pulled out of him. It’s a chemical process, an evolutionary weapon designed to keep prey docile until it’s too late to fight. Jason pulls his teeth out of Roy’s throat, and Roy slumps back against the pillows, eyes blurry around the edges and already half-closed.

“Shit,” he says, with a small, goofy smile. “Shit, Jaybird, that’s amazing.”

Jason licks up the last of the blood, reaches into the bedside table for the med kit they keep nearby. “You feel better?”

“Mhm,” Roy says.

It’s not addictive. It isn’t meant to be. Vampires don’t usually leave their prey alive.

It’s still probably something they never should have fucked around with, given Roy’s history. But Jason’s learned to compromise, knows now that he should take second-best when the alternative is worse. He’ll do this any time Roy needs him to.

And Roy needs it less and less.

Roy’s getting better. He’s always getting better. He’s on a trajectory that sometimes falters but always trends up, and Jason’s been flatlined ever since the Joker got his teeth in Jason’s throat. 

“Don’t go,” Roy says, after Jason’s got him all patched up. He shifts suddenly, sweeps his leg, dumps Jason flat on his back and rolls on top of him. “Stay here.”

“Jesus,” Jason says, catching his breath. “Thought you were half-asleep.”

“I am,” Roy says. His mouth is pressed right below Jason’s ear, and now it’s Jason’s turn to shake, fine shivers that almost make him feel alive again. “Gonna be here when I wake up?”

Jason’s not tired. He slept all damn day. But he twists over on his side, throws an arm around Roy’s waist and pulls him in, buries his face in his hair.

He doesn’t get to keep anyone forever. He knows that. He’s keeping Roy as long as he can.

“Sure,” he says, as Roy nuzzles sleepily into his chest, hooks his fingers in the belt loops of Jason’s jeans. “I’ll be here.”

**Author's Note:**

> For fic updates and more unusual AUs, follow me on [tumblr](https://thepartyresponsible.tumblr.com/).


End file.
